according to CBS News. The platform's name was inspired by the "six degrees of separation" concept, which suggests that every person on the planet is just six connections away from everyone else. Fast forward to the early 2000s, and social media platforms gained widespread popularity with the likes of Friendster and Myspace, followed by Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, among others. Research from 2015 shows that the world spent 22% of their online time on social networks, thus suggesting the popularity of social media platforms, likely fueled by the widespread adoption of smartphones. There are as many as 4.76 billion social media users in the world as of January 2023, equating to 59.4% of the total global population. Definition and features The idea that social media are defined simply by their ability to bring people together has been seen as too broad, as this would suggest that fundamentally different technologies like the telegraph and telephone are also social media. The terminology is unclear, with some early researchers referring to social media as social networks or social networking services in the mid-2000s. A more recent paper from 2015 reviewed the prominent literature in the area and identified four common features unique to then-current social media services: Social media are Web 2.0 Internet-based applications. User-generated content (UGC) is the lifeblood of the social media organism. Users create service-specific profiles for the site or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization. Social media facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user's profile with those of other individuals or groups. In 2019, Merriam-Webster defined social media as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)." While the variety of evolving stand-alone and built-in social media services makes it challenging to define them, marketing and social media experts broadly agree that social media includes the following 13 types: Blogs (ex. Huffington Post, Boing Boing) Business networks (ex. LinkedIn, XING) Enterprise social networks (ex. Yammer, Socialcast) Forums (ex. Gaia Online, IGN Boards) Microblogs (ex. Twitter, Tumblr) Photo sharing (ex. Flickr, Photobucket) Products/services review (ex. Amazon, Elance) Social bookmarking (ex. Delicious, Pinterest) Social gaming (ex. Mafia Wars) Social network sites (ex. Facebook, Instagram) Video sharing (ex. YouTube, Vimeo) Virtual worlds (ex. Second Life, Twinity) Mobile social media Mobile social